Hamid Aboutalebi

Hamid Aboutalebi (16 June 1957-) was an Iranian politician who served as ambassador to Italy from 1988 to 1992, to Belgium from 1995 to 2000, and to Australia from 2003 to 2006.

Biography
Hamid Aboutalebi was born on 16 June 1957 in Tehran, Iran. Aboutalebi was one of the students involved in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and he served as a translator for the protesting students during the Iran hostage crisis with the United States, albeit with peripheral involvement in the incident. Aboutalebi obtained a Ph.D. in sociology frm the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium after gaining a master's degree in sociology in Paris and in Islamic civilization and culture in Tehran. He served as an Iranian ambassador to many countries, including Italy, Belgium, and Australia, and he became a permanent representative of Iran to the United Nations. In 2014 he was denied a visa due to allegations that he was a hostage-taker back in 1979, against a 1947 treaty which said that any representative to the UN would be given a visa to meet at the UN building in New York City.